Friday, 18 March 2011

Today marks my seven year anniversary with my current employer. My supervisor treated me to lunch at Potbelly. It’s kind of a cool fast food place because they toast the bread for their sandwiches (always nice when it’s cold outside) and they have live music. Some guy with a guitar today was singing and strumming “Dear Prudence,” among other great, classic tunes.

Sadly, I think this might be my final occasion being treated to lunch by this particular supervisor. That is, unless we both survive the imminent lay-offs and  continue to have the same working relationship. I doubt it.

Not sure where I’ll be working next, but I’m gonna ask if I get a free meal on my anniversaries.

Saturday, 19 March 2011

Today, our friends Ryan and Esther took us to Jun-bo, an “authentic” Chinese restaurant in Richfield. Our meal was served dim sum style, which basically means every dish the restaurant serves is placed on your table (unless you quickly decline) and you take a portion and pass it on to the others at your table. This, of course, is a great racket for the proprietors, as they manage to rack up your bill to a hefty total before you’ve even looked at the menu.

I must say, though, everything I tried tasted excellent – from the seaweed salad to the pineapple donuts.

Jennifer and I left with five – yes, FIVE – Styrofoam containers filled with food, and our friends had at least three containers in tow as they left. I think this must be some kind of a record; it was as if we both dined at a restaurant and did our food shopping for tomorrow and Monday.

Sunday, 20 March 2011

…Yep, we feasted on Jun-bo left-overs all day.

So, in taking my class this semester, I’ve realized there are some serious gaps in my reading list. So, come mid-May, I’m gonna try to correct that. Things I’m gonna read this summer:

–The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri (friends just called him “Dante”).

–On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin. Of course, the book’s full title is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, because people in the 18th and 19th century abhorred brevity.

–Common Sense and The American Crisis and The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason, all by Thomas “The” Paine. I want to read these because they are constantly referenced in other readings I do.

–A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens (I don’t know, maybe I’ll wait until December to read this). I know so much about this book, I think it’s time to actually read it.

–The Koran, also known as The Qur’an, as dictated by Jibril, also known as Gabriel. Who knows, maybe I’ll become a Muslim?

–The Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Like Paine’s writings, these are vitally important in the history of our nation. I’d like to be able to say I’ve read them.

–The Song of Hiawatha, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I’ve been on Hiawatha Avenue, and I just can’t see how anyone can write a poem about it. I’m very curious.

Also, did you know radiation is good for you? Ann Coulter said so on Bill O’Reilly, so it can’t be wrong. I’m moving to Japan.

Wednesday, 16 March 2011

So, there’s now a chance that liquor stores will no longer be legally prohibited from being open on Sundays. This definitely ranks on my list of stupid laws here in Minnesota.

For one thing, it’s unfair. If the government wants to make it illegal for all stores to be closed on Sunday – okay, well that’s still stupid – but at least it would be fair. This is just an antiquated law that lawmakers imagined would get people to church on Sundays (nevermind that going to church is what often drives people to drink).

For two thing, it seems like a clear case of loss revenue. Granted, if I lived out in the middle of the state, I would just have to wait until Monday to get my liquor (or make sure I got there on Saturday). But I, like thousands of other Minnesotans, live really close to Wisconsin. So I could just drive over there and buy some liquor on Sundays – and this has happened at several events I’ve been to. Thus, lost income for my local store and lost tax revenue for my state. Also, restaurants can still sell alcohol on Sundays, so this outmoded rule seems highly unfair.

The weird thing is, though, I don’t really want stores to be open more. I think it’s too bad that malls stay open even on holidays and many gas stations and convenience stores are open all the time. Come on, people, let’s close up shop from time to time.

However, while I might feel that way, I also feel the government has no business demanding stores be open or closed at certain times. So I’m rooting for this law to be stricken from the books.

Also, I want to thank the sexually repressed, morally deficient Catholic Bishops in North Dakota for giving me a great list of charities I should be supporting. Among the charities they want their flocks to stop supporting are the Susan G. Koman for the Cure foundation and the American Association of University Women. Wow. This is really surprising that a religion would show a bias against organizations that promote women’s welfare. I mean, given how fair the bible treats them, this is really surprising.

Thursday, 17 March 2011

I’m on spring break as of 9:30 this morning. Once class was finished for the day, I took off for work and I don’t have to be back to class until the 29th.

I thought for sure we’d be assigned a paper or two to write but, apart from some reading to do, there are no assignments.

I plan to toss the book up on the shelf for the next ten days or so. There’s no point in reading everything that’s assigned when I will forget most of it by the time I next attend class. This is especially true considering how far behind we are. Today, for example, we discussed some texts that we read a week and a half ago. When we’re so far behind like that, I feel like I have to refresh my memory each time we open up the text in class. Oh well, I’ll manage.

Also, next week I am slated to give a presentation in my Toastmasters Club and right now I have no idea what to talk about. I read the chapter that details the kind of speech I’m to give, but I don’t know what to talk about. And for the upcoming meeting, the Club President invited a bunch of other people to attend, so I feel a little pressure here.

Monday, 14 March 2011

I didn’t go to work today. There’s a slight hint of illness in the air. Jennifer appears to have a low-grade cold, coupled with terrible back pain. She went to bed very early tonight; at about 7:00. Isla joined her in bed about 45 minutes later. Owen and I stayed up to play Uno and Sorry, and then we watched a couple episodes of The Simpsons. He sat right next to me as we watched them online via Hulu. He said that he wanted to watch an episode of Family Guy, too, but I told him that show is for older kids.

Owen argued that he prefers Family Guy because they go out into space.

I countered that they do not, as a rule, spend time in space, we just happened to see one episode one time that did take place in space. Owen gave me a look like I was lying to him. I don’t blame him, my argument, though accurate, did come across as suspect.

I told him it was “getting late,” which I say (regardless of the time) whenever I feel a bit exasperated as a father.

About an hour later, Owen was in bed, too. I stayed up and read, and then I printed off my assignment for tomorrow. Or, at least, I tried to. The printed cartridge must’ve already printed 10 pages, which means it can’t possibly print anymore. I was presented a barely legible, uneven print-out.

Guess I’m stopping at Kinko’s tomorrow morning.

Tuesday, 15 March 2011

I picked Owen up from school today, and I told him we were heading over to the St. Paul Corner Drug store for some ice cream. He didn’t object.

This drug store is the kind of place that the word “quaint” was invented for. You sit at these bar stool and a soda jerk makes up your ice cream for you. The prices are really low and, since it’s also a pharmacy, you get old folks sitting down next to you ordering “soda water.”

Anyway, as with everything within the St. Paul city limits, there’s no place to park. We approached the stoplight just before the drug store. As I waited for the light to turn green, I began looking around for a parking spot. Alas, Lady Luck was on my side: directly in front of the store were two open spots!

The light turned green, and I prepared to make a left onto Snelling so that I could park in front of the store. The vehicle in front of me was also making a left. And…wouldn’t you know it? The driver of that vehicle also intended to use one of those open parking spots. And guess what? She decided to park in the closer one. I was right behind her and, on a busy street such as Snelling, was unable to go around her to park in the next spot. So I just sat there, waiting for the cars to go by so that I could parallel park in that open spot.

But then the woman decided to pull forward. Ooh…how nice of her! Now she will still have a convenient spot, and she will allow me to park behind her with no need of rushing out into traffic or parallel parking. Well, maybe in a perfect world that’s how things would proceed, but this is reality. The women pulled ahead about five feet, thereby straddling both spots. I considered pulling right up to her bumper, but the back half of my car still would’ve been past the “No Parking Here to Corner” sign, and I surely would’ve been ticketed.

I waited for a moment to see if the woman intended to pull forward more. She didn’t. So I drove around her and honked as I drove by. She seemed oblivious.

Moments later, Owen and I walked into the soda shop and, wouldn’t you know it? – there was the oblivious woman having an ice cream with her daughter. Just as Owen and I sat down, the cashier handed the woman back a wad of cash, and the woman began thumbing through it, getting it in order to shove into her wallet.

As the cashier gave her some napkins, the woman held up a 10 dollar bill and said, “Is this Benjamin Franklin?”

“Yeah, I think so,” the young cashier said.

Woman: “Oh, okay. So was he the president that…”

Cashier: “Oh, no, Franklin was never a President.”

Woman: “Oh, but he was the man who invented electricity, right?”

At this point, the cashier looks over at me, nervously, as if the can’t quite think of how to respond without insinuating that the customer is a buffoon. (My professor often dons a similar look.) She replied, slowly, “Well, I think he discovered electricity, but he didn’t invent it.” Which, you know, isn’t really correct, either, but it’s close enough to the fact that I would let it slide in general conversation.

The woman, meanwhile, nodded at her daughter as if she had just bestowed some grand bit of knowledge upon this up and coming generation. She put her wallet into her large purse and headed out the door. She got in her minivan (you know, the thing Henry Ford invented) and drove away.

I asked the cashier how long a person must live before they know that Franklin was not a President. The cashier laughed a little but, to her credit, she tried to be conciliatory to her former customer, “Oh, she was such a nice lady, though.”

On the way home, I asked Owen if Benjamin Franklin was ever the President. “No,” Owen said. I asked Owen how he knew that. “Because I just heard you talking about it,” he said. So I guess the answer to my question is: 5 years. It turns out that woman was a source of education today, after all.

Oh – and just to clarify – no, that is not Benjamin Franklin on the $10. That’s Alexander Hamilton. And in case you don’t recognize these guys by their famous faces, you can just look at the large caption below their pictures.

The one on the $10, for example, reads HAMILTON. He wasn’t President, either.

Friday, 11 March 2011

Today the North Dakota Senate voted to keep the UND’s nickname “The Fighting Sioux.” Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that enough of the Senators voted in such a way to keep the name in effect.

Here’s an article about it.

As my wife astutely pointed out this evening, the issue isn’t so much that a team is named after a particular group of people, it’s that those people have (probably) no say in the matter. Of course, I raised the objection that no Vikings were consulted in the naming of Minnesota’s homeless football team, but my wife countered that the Scandinavian roots run deep here in the land of 10,000 hot dishes.

But…still…aren’t the Vikings just being stereotyped? I mean, not all Vikings were warriors. They didn’t wear horns, and the long braids were only in style in the summer of 997AD. But I suppose since many players on the team and many of their fans are descendants of Vikings, then things are cool, right? Wait – who here is a descendant of Vikings?

My high school team was known as the Fighting Irish, a name adopted because of the town’s large Irish population, and due to the fact that Irishmen do nothing all day but beat up each other.

Maybe a better idea is to nix ethnic terms altogether, especially terms like “Sioux,” which were labels applied by outsiders who couldn’t pronounce tricky words like “Lakota.” If you are gonna name your team after a group of people, pick an occupation (Packers, Steelers, Cowboys, Senators) or a movement (Patriots, 49ers).

Skol White Skins, let’s go!

Saturday, 12 March 2011

We dined at TGI Friday’s (Thank Ganesha It’s F’s) this afternoon. We gave Isla a couple of pieces of Owen’s pasta and she pretty much just immerses herself in the sensory experience of handling noodles between her fingers and gumming them into a tasty paste.

I, meanwhile, had me a bowl of mashed potatoes. Not sure why, but about two days ago I suddenly got a hankerin’ for some mashed potatoes (and, no, I don’t think it’s correct to spell “hankerin'” with a G at the end). I was craving them all day yesterday. I even contemplated running out to the grocery store to go buy some, but my laziness trumped my appetite. So, today, while we were out running errands, Jennifer managed to sell the idea of dining at Friday’s by noting that they offer mashed potatoes as a side dish. I suggested going to a buffet where I could heap a mountain of potatoes onto my plate Dreyfuss-style, but Jennifer reminded me that everything at buffets tastes the same, so I could just chew on the steering wheel if I wanted mashed potatoes from a buffet.

Anyway, I’m all better now.

Sunday, 13 March 2011

Guess who my favorite artist of the last 100 years is?

Did you guess Alfred Hitchcock? You guessed wrong.

Did you guess Gene Roddenberry? George Orwell? Mason Jennings? Puff Daddy? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. And extremely wrong.

The answer is Paul Simon.

Yeah, that’s right. If I was stranded on a dessert island, and I was given the option of having with me a collection of Hitchcock classics, my favorite works of fiction, or Paul Simon’s discography, I would opt for the latter.

I can’t think of anyone else, who, in my opinion, has so consistently put out such quality work. There are other musicians for which people could maybe (maybe!) make a case for superior lyrics – Bob Dylan comes to mind – and others for which superior musical arrangement could be made – Brian Wilson comes to mind – but in combination, Simon is peerless. I once made a list of my 25 favorite albums, and Paul Simon had four on the list (six if you count his work with Garfunkel). I also once made a list of my 50 favorite songs – a list I was never fully satisfied with, incidentally – but the top ten included four songs by Paul Simon, including the #1, #2, and #3 positions. And you probably won’t believe this, but I tried really hard to not give one performer such a monopoly on the top three, but I just couldn’t honestly say that the #4 or #5 songs were better than those three Simon songs.

For many years, Simon has been the soundtrack of my life. In high school, I love Simon and Garfunkel just as much as my classmates loved MC Hammer and the New Kids on the Block. And I’m also happy to say that, unlike them, my fandom has never turned to embarrassment. Later, I was given a copy of his solo album Graceland and found myself astonished that, for what seemed like the first time, I actually enjoyed an entire studio album (most of my music collection at that time consisted of greatest hits albums). Later, I purchased copies of his albums Still Crazy After All These Years and The Rhythm of the Saints and I started to think that he could do no wrong.

In 2006, Simon (who by that time had become the pop star with the most Grammies) released his latest album, Surprise. Again, it’s a masterpiece and I enjoy blasting it at work whenever I go in on Saturday and have the lab to myself.

I am eagerly anticipating his album So Beautiful or So What, which is slated for release next month. I will have a copy the day it becomes available.

Lucky for Minnesota, Simon is coming in concert on May 2nd to the Minneapolis Convention Center. Jennifer and I were thinking this might be our last opportunity to see our favorite musician (he’s 69 years old, after all) as well as a great first-concert for Owen. Ticket prices start at $132.

I’m not saying he’s not worth it. I’m just saying I can’t afford it. Oh well. Rock on, Paul. Rock on.

Tuesday, 08 March 2011

Today marked my first exam in college in quite a while. The last class I took (right before Isla was born) had absolutely no exams of any kind.

I was not as nervous for this exam as I was for previous exams I have taken at Hamline. I think the main difference is that this exam was short – other exams have consisted of writing non-stop for nearly an hour. This exam lasted ‘only’ 50 minutes, and the first ten minutes were taken up with simply identifying who authored which passages.

I gotta hand it to the professor, he knew how to be tricky. For example, he included a passage from an account by Thomas Morton. In that passage, Morton explains what the Puritans thought of the maypole he erected and danced around with the natives (of course they were offended). But here’s the tricky part: we also read a narrative from Puritan William Bradford, who wrote about how offended he was about that maypole. So, see the tricky part? Was the passage from Morton or Bradford? It was tough to figure out at first, but then, near the end of the passage, Morton uses the self-identifying pronoun “mine-host.” That’s at once a unique and silly phrase. I mean, how many people refer to themselves as “mine-host”?

I should start doing that.

The bulk of the test consisted of selecting four of the ten passages, and then writing about them. The problem, as with other exams, is to succinctly and intelligently make my point. I could have easily written a paper on any of the passages regardless of the number or words or pages the professor specified. But it is a bit difficult to plan out and execute a written argument while the clock is ticking.

Regardless, I’m sure I got an A. Or, should I say: Mine-host is sure mine-host got an A.

Wednesday, 09 March 2011

I attended a Toastmasters meeting this afternoon. I had no speeches to deliver, and no speeches to evaluate. I was not the grammarian or the timer or the toastmaster. This then could mean only one thing: I would be called upon to give a table topics speech.

Table topics (not sure why it’s called that) is a part of the meeting where an assigned person gets up and announced the topic and then calls on people to come up and give a speech with (almost) no preparation time. Today, the table topics master had decided on the topic “Tough Questions From Kids.” He called on me first and, as I was walking up to the front, he said, “Okay, James, your question is this: ‘Dad, is God real?'”

Ha!

I began by saying this: “Well, since simply saying ‘no’ won’t fill my two minutes, I’ll try to elaborate here.” That got me some stares. Indeed, I should remember that for future speeches: if no one seems to be paying attention, just announce that God is fake. Then they’ll look up and pay attention.

Anyway, I quasi-coherently explained that people try to explain the meaning of their lives and the possibility of afterlife and this usually requires the need for a deity. Technically, no one knows if these deities exist, but we can look at the evidence (i.e., The Bible) and see if it is compelling. “Extraordinary claims,” I said, paraphrasing Sagan, “require extraordinary evidence, so before you go jumping to any conclusions about gods, make absolutely sure that the god someone is selling is a reality, especially because of the life-consuming religion that is bound to go with it.”

Also, did you know the rapture is coming on May 21st? Yeah, there is a billboard advertising this in St. Paul (which I would take a picture of if I still had use of my trusty Verizon instead of my shitty AT&T). When will these silly Christians learn? If you want to talk about the end of the world, you don’t speak in specifics – you speak in vague generalities that place the end of the world tantalizingly close yet ambiguously distant so as to allow for reinterpretation. Like the Watchtower does.

Thursday, 10 March 2011

Well, I didn’t find out how I did on my exam yet…so stay tuned.

But on the topic of college: today in class we looked deeper into a text we read about the Salem Witch Trials. Here are a few things I want to mention about it:

1) Did you know Benjamin Franklin wrote a parody of the trials? Yeah, he did. Here it is, and it’s a fun (and short!) read. He basically lampoons the community’s crazy idea that you can test if someone is a witch by if they float or sink: Sink=witch / Float=not a witch. The funny part is that two women keep floating, even though the community insists they are witches. Certain people suggest they are floating because of the clothes they are wearing and, well, I don’t want to wreck it for you.

2) The professor divulged that he likes to visit Wikipedia as a springboard for obtaining information on a subject. A few of my classmates laughed, assuming the professor was joking, but then the professor said he was serious. And I agree…it’s a great place to start.

3) The professor, in an attempt to argue the continuing popularity of the incident at Salem, noted how many hits a Google search reveals. I am unmoved by this, as many of the hits are repeat pages, and (I am guessing) a similar argument could be made for thousands of such historical events.

Also, the results widely differ depending upon the given word choice; my use of “Salem Witch Trials” (above) yielded approximately 50,000 more hits than the professor obtained in class (sorry, can’t recall exactly what he typed in).

4) In a more compelling argument, the professor noted that we had read texts regarding the slaughter of 400 Native Americans at the hands of Europeans, of a European woman’s three month captivity amongst the natives, and of a crew’s nine year odyssey lost in Florida/Texas/Mexico until they finally met up with their Spanish brothers. Why aren’t those stories anywhere near as popular as the Salem Witch Trials? Indeed, I was unaware of those other three events until I began this class, yet I have known about the Salem saga since I was in elementary school. Why the difference? Good question.

The professor added that the trials have so seeped into our cultural consciousness (I thought of the word “meme,” though he never used it) that we can scarcely go a day without observing it being referenced somewhere. I was skeptical about this, but after class, I left to go to work. Just as I was parking at my job, an MPR correspondent reported that Representative Keith Ellison has termed fellow Representative Peter King’s investigation into Muslim extremism a witch hunt.

Well play professor, well played.

5) Visit this site (we did in class)…if you dare.